Never Look Away
by Shade Embry
Summary: How CTU's tech expert met Mason, beginning the alliance that changed their lives - and inadvertently changed Jack's. Prequel.


TITLE: Never Look Away  
  
AUTHOR: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick  
  
E-MAIL: baltimorelt@yahoo.com  
  
RATING: PG for language  
  
CATEGORY: Prequel, Vignette  
  
SUMMARY: How Liz formed the alliance with Mason that would ultimately protect Jack more times than he can count. Takes place before the series starts and before all of my other stories.  
  
1 I was waiting for you  
  
Now you say you need some time, solitude and space  
  
I think you're crazy  
  
You're drowning in the thick of it, baby  
  
You're gasping for air  
  
I'd reach out to save you, but you don't want me there  
  
And I'm walking alone now  
  
I guess I'm just like you  
  
But I wish you'd come home now, I don't know what to do  
  
I've been hurt so many times  
  
But I would never hurt you, you mean too much to me  
  
And I'm walking alone now  
  
Somehow I can't win  
  
I know you'll come only to leave again  
  
- Love Riot, "Wrecking Ball"  
  
  
  
District was not an interesting place for low-level field agents who really had no business being there except for at the whim of their superiors. It meant unnecessary paperwork, unnecessary questions, and time wasted at mind games, and those who weren't future bureaucrats, like Elisabeth Rycoff, hated the time when they had to report for evaluations, which likely meant reshuffling. And yet, there it was: a necessary evil.  
  
Unlike most of her compatriots at the CIA's Electronic Crimes Bureau, Los Angeles Branch, Liz understood the bureaucratic side of the Agency. That didn't mean she played it, but she knew what she was getting into when she reported to District that Tuesday and every Tuesday. Having arrived several minutes early for her evaluation, she decided, having also bypassed breakfast, to stop by the Agency's break room and make herself a cup of coffee. If she was assigned to Chris Banning, she'd been told the interview could go for an hour plus.  
  
Please, dear God, she thought as she crossed the hall, don't let it be Banning. Let him get passed off to Erickson. God knows Erickson needs a good stern lecture. And as for me … senior staff agent with the ECB, second- year, official title "Computer Terrorism Specialist" … well, let's hope for something easier.  
  
She poured and slugged back a polite drink. Her nerves responded immediately, a good sign. Liz deposited herself in an empty chair and rested her forehead on her fingertips. "If only…" she started, but never bothered to finish the thought.  
  
"If only we weren't all caged in here, right?" someone else said.  
  
Liz turned, looked over her shoulder at the man who had entered the break room. She wondered which part of the Agency he worked for, because it had to be far removed from the left-of-center types who worked for ECB. He was business, and refined at that, the poster boy for the Agency's sardonic, so- well-cut-you-could-get-sliced-walking-by elite class of agents.  
  
"Something like that," she said, playing her hand conservative for the time being.  
  
"Yeah, these things are a pain in the ass for everyone involved," he said, finally turning around from the beverage table and affording her the first look at his face. He had to be in his late thirties but no older than forty, strong facial features and intense eyes that both unnerved and commanded. She figured he would have no problem with the evaluations. He sat down next to her, studied her briefly, and extended a hand.  
  
"George Mason."  
  
"Liz Rycoff," she said, taking it. He had a firm, confident handshake. "L.A. Electronic Crimes. I don't know why they called us in."  
  
"It could have been a random scan," he said, taking a drink of his own coffee. Then he looked at her again. "Wait. Is Liz your given name?"  
  
"It's Elisabeth, but I haven't answered to that since forever." She arched an eyebrow. "Does it make any difference?"  
  
"It just might." Mason began scanning the stack of files he'd brought in with him, tracing a line down a list of names with his finger. "Yeah," he said after a moment, glancing at her with a small, sardonic smile. "I'm scheduled to do your evaluation."  
  
"Jesus." Liz chuckled. "Shall we break out the blood test now or later?"  
  
Mason laughed with her. "Whenever you'd like."  
  
"Well, pardon my directness…"  
  
"No apologies necessary. I appreciate directness in agents. Spending twelve minutes saying three words doesn't work that well for me."  
  
"…In that case, let's get the Freudian torture over with, because I have a few dockets on my desk I'd like to clear today."  
  
Mason smiled, shifting in his chair to face her. "You know, Liz, I think I'm going to like you."  
  
"I'd only hope so, George."  
  
-Some Time Later-  
  
"Twenty-two minutes, forty-six seconds," Mason said with a small, almost imperceptible smile as he closed the file on Liz. "I think you're a new record. And I don't have to actually time it to know that."  
  
"Whatever." Ordinarily – if she'd been stuck with any other interrogator – she'd never have been so nonchalant, but Liz didn't feel the need to be proper with Mason. God knows he probably stuck by the guns of procedure, but he wasn't demanding the "yes, sir" kind of answers out of her, and she respected that in a supervising agent. As Bill Yoast had said: "We're not the Marines."  
  
But Mason had set the file on the break room table and now leaned forward, growing more serious for a moment. "Liz, I do have one question for you."  
  
Liz nodded. "Go ahead."  
  
"Have you ever considered a transfer? We could use someone like you at District. We're somewhat shorthanded in Technology, and I think you're a prime candidate to fill that gap."  
  
"You know this just from a few questions you've asked me."  
  
"I've always been good at reading people, Liz." Mason paused. "Your track record at ECB is exemplary – senior staff in your second year. I don't see anyone who can beat that."  
  
"Due respect, I've never come here to move up on the chain, just to do my job."  
  
"And I'm giving you a chance to do it on a wider scope." He exhaled. "Honestly, I like what I see in you, Liz. I don't want to be just the moron who accidentally walked into you before performing your evaluation. I want to give you a chance, because contrary to popular opinion, District officers actually do that kind of thing."  
  
"Yeah, tell that to Chappelle."  
  
"Chappelle's an asshole," Mason said with a surprising frankness. "Talk to me, Liz. Or is this going to be one-sided?"  
  
She thought about it for a few moments. Truth be told, though Electronic Crimes was a stable position, it was routine – background checks, anti- virus programming, repair work. It didn't allow her to use her real talents – codebreaking, cryptography, the more intrinsical work. What the ECB guys didn't understand was that computer terrorism wasn't about the computer but the terrorist. And she didn't care for most of them. There were few agents she *did* care for…  
  
"There *is* someplace I'd like to transfer to, if it's open."  
  
"Name it."  
  
"The new Counter-Terrorist Unit. I believe Jack Bauer's its chief."  
  
Mason looked surprised. "Talk about left field."  
  
"Jack and I work well together. We have some professional," she emphasized professional, "history, and I've wanted to expand my scope of duty into more terrorism-oriented work."  
  
"I know." Mason opened her file, produced another list, and passed it across to her. "You're on Bauer's list of requested operatives. I just thought he picked you on reputation or a few passed words during a recon."  
  
Here she shook her head. "It's much more than that, George. And forgive me for sounding idealist, but together I think we can make a difference and not botch this like Counter-Hostilities did five years ago."  
  
Mason paused, studying her face, the vibrancy of her eyes when she was consumed by how much she really did believe in what she was saying. "That's what you really want?"  
  
"You're looking in my eyes. You tell me."  
  
"All right." He exhaled. "I'll put it through. But promise me one thing."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You'll consider District one of these days."  
  
"I don't like making too many promises, but … I'll see what I can do."  
  
"Good." He stood with her, walking her toward the break room door. "And one more thing."  
  
"Don't operate a laptop near an OTS facility?"  
  
Mason smirked, but shook his head. "I'd like to see how you work sometime. How about after I put in the transfer, I hand-deliver the paperwork to your desk, and then we have lunch?"  
  
"Sounds like a fair deal."  
  
"I'll see you Thursday afternoon then." Mason shook her hand one final time. "Impressive examination, Elisabeth. Keep up the good work."  
  
-Present Day-  
  
"Strangest goddamn story I can credit to myself."  
  
"I've seen worse, but then again I still work here," Liz said, sitting in the chair opposite Jack's desk, which Mason had temporarily claimed in the chaos of the Palmer-Drazen affair. Across the desk, Mason chuckled dryly. "How many times have I asked you to come work with me, Liz?" he asked. She paused. "I don't count them anymore, George." He nodded. "And every time, you give it all up to stay here with Jack. I've read your files. You two have an uncannily blind devotion to each other."  
  
"I never believed in much of anything. Jack was the best thing to happen to me in a long while. I stay with the good things, George. Besides," she added with a small smile, "I see enough of you down here anyway."  
  
Mason smiled briefly, but his tone gained levity quickly. "And if this place folds when today is through? What then? Say Jack gets fired or CTU L.A. gets shut down. What do you do?"  
  
"Then I pick myself up, and I begin again."  
  
"Where the hell is 'again'?"  
  
"I never know, George. That's part of the whole thing. Sometimes, you just show up for two years in the middle of nowhere, keep your mouth shut and you wait … and then every now and then you have a Tuesday where you walk in the right door and everything clicks."  
  
Mason checked his desk calendar. "Today's Wednesday."  
  
"We can fudge, can't we? All of the days look the same to me after a while. Just me, Jack and a computer and some other stuff in the background."  
  
He glanced out of the office down onto the CTU floor. "And Jack has no opinion on you being so well connected to me at all?"  
  
"He lets me do my own thing, George. Most of the time, it happens to be with him. But when it isn't, he doesn't ask questions. And I'd ask that you don't either."  
  
"I never have," Mason paused, "and I never will."  
  
"Thanks." Liz stood, turned to leave. "George, do you ever wish that people saw you for who you really are, stopped demonizing you behind your back?" she asked at the door.  
  
"Not really. Part of me *is* what they see out there. And the only dream I've had for a while now is to see you behind a District desk."  
  
Liz smiled as she pushed open the door. "Maybe some other time. Ask me that question again next Tuesday." 


End file.
